The Summer Without Men
ABOUT
THE BOOK
After Mia Fredricksen’s husband of thirty years asks for a pause – so he can indulge his infatuation with a young French colleague – she cracks up ‘briefly’, rages ‘deeply’, then decamps to her prairie childhood home.
There, gradually, she is drawn into the lives of those around her: her mother’s circle of feisty widows; the young woman next door; and the diabolical teenage girls in her poetry class. By the end of the summer without men, Mia knows what’s worth fighting for – and on whose terms.
Provocative, mordant, and fiercely intelligent, this is a gloriously vivacious tragi-comedy about women and girls, love and marriage, and the age-old war between the sexes.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
Sensitive and Funny in spite of the narrator’s personal trials (her husband’s betrayal, an elderly mother in a home, a writing class of hormones-ridden teenage girls). Hustvedt writes about (through Mia) how those issues affect us though they’re the ordinary lot of human relationships. With professional help, her own brand of humour and friendship, Mia will go through that summer, the summer without men.
Our readers’ choice